Today Yassihoyuk and the villages bordering it, within a radius of 40 km., practice mixed farming which is well above subsistence level. In fact, the region is referred as the breadbasket of Turkey. Yassihoyuk village covers an area of nearly 2,500 hectares. It is surrounded by lush fields of wheat, barley and sugar beet, melon and onion. While the latter three are cash crops and intensively irrigated, the cereals are rain-fed. The fields abut the many tumuli which string across the landscape; the uncultivated patches of marginal land is used for grazing the village herds. While the number of herds is diminished by 70% since 40 years, the increase in agricultural activity has more than quadrupled.

My findings , in part, support the hypothesis that up until 50 years ago in the Sakarya River plain , animal husbandry had played a major role in the regional economy; in fact, extensive herding of sheep and Angora goats were critical to the development of a mixed farming economy in the region. When tested against the archaeological evidence, the ethnographic model should be useful to explain the history of the ancient settlement and economy.

The interrelationship between farming and herding is complex; ideally, farming and herding "feed" each other. Keeping livestock is feasible only as part of a mixed farming strategy. In the Sakarya floodplain cereal cultivation is the mainstay of the economy. Small number of herds are kept as a hedge against market shortages and drought. Their number is drastically reduced since mechanized agriculture was started in early 1960s. The Angora goat, well-adapted to the steppelands of the Ankara region, has become a symbolic figure of the past, for its silken wool finds few markets in the country. It is bred only in upland regions, away from agricultural zones. As in the past, animals still provide capital for short-term needs or to purchase land, just as the new cash crops, sugar beet and onions provide ready cash for fuel and fertilizer. At Yassihoyuk herding is village-based. At upland villages, however, short and long-distance herding are also practised. Pastoral activity is the primary preoccupation in the upland villages where grazing alternates between the village and "yayla" (high plateau) throughout the year; land use, size and productivity of herds vary from those at Yassihoyuk.

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